Cities produce the vast majority of economic & intellectual activity in this country, but whatever you do, don't repeat that, much less show any pride in it, lest you be accused of insufficiently venerating America's furiously mythologized ruralites.
Countdown to one of the aforementioned ruralites telling me that rural areas "feed the cities" ...
If urbanites are given equal democratic representation, ruralites will get in a snit an stop feeding them, and they'll all starve, staring helplessly at the empty Starbuck sandwich cooler ...
... seems to be the implied threat.
The irony being that the bulk of rural farmland is owned by a handful of extremely large corporations run by wealthy Republicans who live in cities.
The other irony being that the most florid & demagogic claims made on behalf of ruralites come from Ivy League-educated Republican politicians who also live in cities.
The final irony being that the massive program of reinvestment that would be required to renew & revitalize America's rural areas is being pushed hardest by the left side of the Democratic Party. It's called the Green New Deal, and the ruralites hate it.
Of course, what they hate is a deranged fantasy version of the Green New Deal in which cows are illegal, windows are shrunk, and electricity costs a jillion dollars a kWh, but no one in their world, no one who they trust, is telling them anything different, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
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Politics is not a f'ing game, you utter thimblehead. Democrats want to spend billions addressing poverty & homelessness. Republicans want to spend nothing. That difference swamps a few token food-bank donations.
There are *millions* of people like this in America, who just want all the political fighting & squabbling to stop so we can move on and [DO THINGS DEMOCRATS ARE ADVOCATING FOR AND REPUBLICANS ARE FIGHTING].
I think all the time about this great interview with singer/songwriter @TheBrandyClark on @SwitchedOnPop. Clark is a close, insightful observer of human foibles -- her songs are soaked in empathy & compassion. She's just a good person. But on politics ...
This is a permission structure for cons to spend the next four years denying the legitimacy of Biden's presidency. (They would find some reason regardless, but this will do.) politico.com/news/2020/11/0…
All day today I have been having the vertiginously weird experience of trying to convince Democrats that the fact that the RW has a giant, coordinated messaging machine & they don't *matters*. To no effect! I can't even get people to acknowledge & discuss it.
And yet every single Dem, from center to left, is eager AF to discuss "messaging" & "framing." They'll all spend hours lingering over various word combinations, poring over focus group results, convince that just the right phrase is the key to the kingdom. Argh.
Politics is about money & power. Messaging is part of politics & therefore ALSO about money & power. The cleverness or stickiness or virality or whatever TF of individual phrases is not what wins messaging battles. Money & power win them.
I'm a huge NKJ fan & like all of this. But I feel like it makes a common left mistake in focusing too much on the content of messaging & too little on the mechanisms. Right narratives stick not because they're more clever but because the right has a giant media machine!
The right's narratives are echoed throughout a vast apparatus from Fox to Breitbart to radio to Facebook to, now, local newspapers that have been bought by RW billionaires. The left simply has nothing like that! It mostly tries to jam its messages through the distorting filter...
... of mainstream journalism (which doesn't work). This is such a ubiquitous fact about US politics I feel we almost forget it, the way fish don't notice water. So much discussion of what Dems say, or should say, & so little attention ...
Instead of "reaching out," why don't we take this opportunity to make very clear that racism, xenophobia, and authoritarianism are repugnant to a decent society. Let's reject them, loudly & publicly, & extend social disapprobation to those who support them.
When someone expresses racism, xenophobia, or authoritarianism in public, they SHOULD face backlash. We do not need sympathy for those facing such backlash -- that's things working as they should! Reserve your sympathy for racism's millions & millions of victims.
Oh, wait, what's that, your motivations for discrimination & hatred are "religious"? Yeah I don't care.